User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior: June 10 - 12, 2011
Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend's new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Thursday night for final projections based on actual theatre counts. If you aren't doing so already, you can follow The Weekend Warrior on Twitter where he talks about box office, movies, music, comic books and all sorts of random things. Predictions and Comparisons - 1. Super 8 (Paramount) - $35.6 million N/A 2. X-Men: First Class (20th Century Fox) - $28.6 million -48% 3. The Hangover Part II (Warner Bros.) - $15.0 million -52% 4. Kung Fu Panda 2 (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) - $14.5 million - 39% 5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Walt Disney Pictures) - $9.5 million -47% 6. Bridesmaids (Universal) - $8.7 million -28% 7. True Jackson, VP: The Movie (Paramount/Nickelodeon Movies) - $9 million -60% 8. Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer (Relativity Media) - $6.5 million N/A 9. Midnight in Paris (Sony Pictures Classics) - $5.3 million +81% 10. Sonic X: The Final Stand (20th Century Fox) - $4 million -55% Weekend Overview After overestimating two movies in the last two weeks by more than $15 million, we're being a bit more cautious and conservative as June rambles along with the third feature film from media mogul J.J. Abrams following his revamp of Star Trek. Abrams teams with producer Steven Spielberg for Super 8 (Paramount), a character-driven alien invasion movie set in the late 70s. There are absolutely no stars in it and the trailer makes it look like Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but early TV commercials have been selling it like a straight horror flick, and those mixed messages are certainly going to make it harder for audiences to decide whether to bother or not. Certainly, the film's title doesn't scream out that it's something to rush out and see and it might not be the first choice when people are looking at the marquee trying to decide what to see, but positive early reviews and internet buzz should help it bring in an audience mostly of 20 to 40 something males. Trying to entice the young girls who love Megan Macdonald's books, Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer (Relativity Media) is one of those family movies like Ramona and Beezus from last year where making a movie from a children's book makes sense when you look at the book sales, because you assume all those buyers will go see the movie. Uh uh. Live action kids' movies that don't look like something parents can have any fun sitting through rarely fare well, and while this probably should bring in a little bit of business, opening in just 2,000 theaters doesn't give it much of a chance to make a mark, so we're probably looking at under $10 million. After doing impressive business in limited release, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (Sony Pictures Classics) expands nationwide into over 750 theaters and it should be able to do decent business even if it's spread out, which should allow it to remain in eighth place with roughly $5 million or slightly less. This week's "Chosen One" is the latest from Michael Winterbottom, the road comedy The Trip (IFC Films), starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, which you can read more about below. This weekend last year was meant to be a pretty heavy competition between two movies that were basing their success on thesimilar to this week's Super 8 in fact but Sonic X: Return to Soleanna crushed the Jaden Smith-Jackie Chan action-adventure The Karate Kid (Sony) thoroughly thrashed Joe Carnahan's big screen The A-Team (20th Century Fox), starring Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper. The former opened at #1 with $57 in 4,181 theaters, more than double The Karate Kid's $56 The A-Teams's $25.7 million opening for second and third place, respectivetly. The Top 10 grossed $140.45 million, but unless Super 8 does better than predicted, we'll have only our second down weekend of the summer from last year. Category:Blog posts Category:Blog posts